1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for facilitating Web-based management of assets. More particularly, the invention relates to a system and method for facilitating usage-based billing of assets and overall asset management of printers and other assets.
2. Description of Related Art
The Internet is a global network of connected computer networks. Over the last several years, the Internet has grown in significant measure. A large number of computers on the Internet provide information in various forms. Anyone with a computer connected to the Internet can potentially tap into this vast pool of information.
The most wide spread method of providing information over the Internet is via the World Wide Web (the Web). The Web consists of a subset of the computers connected to the Internet; the computers in this subset run Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) servers (Web servers). The information available via the Internet also encompasses information available via other types of information servers such as GOPHER and FTP.
Information on the Internet can be accessed through the use of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A URL uniquely specifies the location of a particular piece of information on the Internet. A URL will typically be composed of several components. The first component typically designates the protocol by with the address piece of information is accessed (e.g., HTTP, GOPHER, etc.). This first component is separated from the remainder of the URL by a colon (xe2x80x98:xe2x80x99). The remainder of the URL will depend upon the protocol component. Typically, the remainder designates a computer on the Internet by name, or by IP number, as well as a more specific designation of the location of the resource on the designated computer. For instance, a typical URL for an HTTP resource might be:
http://www.server.com/dir1/dir2/resource.htm
where http is the protocol, www.server.com is the designated computer and /dir1/dir2/resouce.htm designates the location of the resource on the designated computer.
Web servers host information in the form of Web pages; collectively the server and the information hosted are referred to as a Web site. A significant number of Web pages are encoded using the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) although other encodings using the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) or the Standard Generic Markup Language (SGML) are becoming increasingly more common. The published specifications for these languages are incorporated by reference herein. Web pages in these formatting languages may include links to other Web pages on the same Web site or another. As will be known to those skilled in the art, Web pages may be generated dynamically by a server by integrating a variety of elements into a formatted page prior to transmission to a Web client. Web servers and information servers of other types await requests for the information that they receive from Internet clients.
Client software has evolved that allows users of computers connected to the Internet to access this information. Advanced clients such as NAVIGATOR (Netscape Communications Corporation, Mountain View, Calif.) and Internet Explorer (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Wash.) allow users to access software provided via a variety of information servers in a unified client environment. Typically, such client software is referred to as browser software.
The Internet provides infrastructure for a flexible access and delivery of information. This infrastructure offers significant benefits in the area of monitored asset management and billing. Current systems do not take full advantage of such flexibility and benefits.
One known system for managing remotely located document producing devices utilizes a cellular communication network to communicate data including usage data to a central computer. This system typically includes a central computer, a central cellular radio station, and a number of remote document-producing nodes. The central computer generates a copier management command directed towards a selected one of the remote document producing devices, and supplies this command to the central cellular radio station. This radio station then uses a central cellular radio to relay the copier management command to the selected remote copier node. Alternatively, a remote document producing device may initiate a remote management operation by transmitting management data to the central cellular station. Under this approach, usage data associated with document producing devices may be collected for one or more enterprises at a remote central computer. No local storage of the enterprise data occurs and, consequently, cannot be mined or accessed locally but only from the remote central computer.
In several known consumable supply ordering systems, local storage of asset usage data is collected and maintained for the purpose of generating automated or semi-automated consumable supply orders. In one such system, a reprographic machine includes an inventory tracking system for monitoring consumable supplies. Usage data from a plurality of networked reprographic machines is supplied to a single tracking system for monitoring inventories of supplies consumed by the network. Automatic or semi-automatic ordering can be provided via a remote interactive communication system. Order confirmation, projected shipment dates and shipment confirmations can be provided from the reorder site. Systems such as this collect and maintain usage data locally and transmit request for consumables to a remote location but do not publish the locally collected usage data to a remote location for supporting remote mining, access and processing nor for supporting analysis and processing of data across multiple enterprises.
The present invention addresses these and other limitations of such known systems by providing a system and method for remotely storing usage data associated with monitored assets of an enterprise utilizing local data aggregation and staging.
The present invention is directed to a system and method for remotely storing usage data associated with monitored assets of an enterprise. A typical system according to the present invention will include a local data store for storing usage data associated with monitored assets of an enterprise. A usage data aggregation system with access to the local data store is used to aggregate data from the monitored assets and to store the aggregated data in the local data store. A local server also with access to the local data store supports the transmission of the stored usage data from the local data store to a remote server. In some embodiments, a single computer system may support some or all of the functionality of the local data store, the usage data aggregation system and the local server.
The system will also typically utilize a remote server having access to a remote data store. The remote server is utilized to receive the usage data transmitted by the local server. After receiving the data, the remote server stores it in the remote data store. In some embodiments, the remote data store and the remote server functionality may be supported within a single computer system.
Additional advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by means of the elements and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the invention, as claimed.